Trouble with Time Lords
by Person-without-a-FF.N-account
Summary: Rose goes wandering the TARDIS corridors, only to find that the Doctor and the Master are in trouble... again. Warning: Contains knitting, fluff and the Doctor being silly.


A/N: This is another fic set in the Rose-Doctor-Master-travelling-together headcanon universe thingamajig. If you enjoy reading about these three, please go check out my other story, 'Christmas with Time Lords'.

Pairings: None, really. I mean, you see what you want to see through your pairing-tinted goggles, but no romance is really implied here. Although I maintain that Rose and the Doctor are adorable together :3

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is owned by the BBC, not me.

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Rose was sitting back in the pilot's seat, her feet resting on the console like the Doctor's often did. She had a portion of chips in one hand, from her favourite chippy around the corner of her flat in London; the TARDIS could replicate chips pretty well, but nothing quite compared to that taste of home.

She smiled up at the rhythmically humming time rotor, wondering where her two Time Lords had got to. They had both disappeared about an hour ago, the Doctor saying he was going to try 'Perpetual space-knitting', whatever that was, and the Master slouching out of the room, muttering something about a nap. Rose liked the Master, and she also acknowledged the fact that he was a psychopathic, sadistic madman who had killed millions of people, but sometimes he acted so much like a hungover teenager it was difficult to take him seriously.

Rose finished her chips and decided to wander around and see if she could find the Doctor. The TARDIS corridors twisted and snaked, each corner bringing a new surprise - a glass floor stretching for some metres over an aquarium, a brief switch in gravity, even a flume-like slide which deposited Rose in a gigantic basin of pillows. Doors and sometimes windows lined every gallery, and beyond them, areas of mystery and wonder, and a disproportionate amount of bathrooms. There were even some rooms that looked like little shops or museums, and, of course, libraries.

Rose passed all these, looking for the Doctor's favourite room. It was called the Random Room, and Rose often compared it to Harry Potter's Room of Requirement. It was fun and different every time she walked in, and extremely strange things always happened in there - from erratic snowfall to a sudden appearence of a chicken.

However, nothing was _quite _as unexpected as the sight that she witnessed upon opening the door.

The first thing she noticed was the room's current decor. It was large and cozy, full of odd angles, with a big victorian-looking dresser, several plush sofas and a shining suit of armour in the corner.

The second thing was the water. As soon as she stepped down through the raised doorway, several inches of water lapped at her shoes, soaking through the thin canvas into her socks. The entire room was practically flooded, albeit shallowly. It was also freezing. Rose rubbed her bare arms and looked around for the Doctor.

She then noticed the huge dandelion heads - several times the size she was used to, drifting around the room in a non-existent breeze - and shortly after, the wool. It was everywhere, rainbow striped, strewn across every surface, like a gigantically long, tangled worm. It seemed to go on forever, but eventually her eyes followed the trail back to one of the sofas, and the Doctor.

He was sitting there, calmly winding the rainbow wool around a huge spool. Rose tried to ignore the fact that there was a silver battleaxe embedded in the sofa arm beside him.

The Master was reclining on the opposite sofa, fiddling with a nearby dandelion head. He was wearing thin, blood-red pyjamas and the Doctor's leather duster coat, which was slightly too big for him. He looked around as Rose entered the room.

"Here comes trouble," he grinned.

"You can talk!" she hooted, "What's been goin' on in 'ere?"

"_Well_," said the Doctor in that way of his, "It's kind of difficult to explain, but the important thing is that _I_ didn't start it."

"Actually, he did," said the Master. "You want to know what happened, Rosie? _He _spilled _acid_ on my pillow."

"I told you," retorted the Doctor, "It was an honest mistake!"

"Just like all _this,_" the Master waved his hand around, "Was an honest mistake."

"Oh come on, you had as much to do with it as I did!"

Rose looked back and forth between them with a bemused expression. It was like watching a verbal tennis match.

"Oh for the love of-" the Master checked himself, then turned to Rose, "I'll start from the beginning. First off,as I said, the Doctor spilled acid on my pillow. The toxic, corroding kind, by the way. Luckily I discovered it, and came in here to give him a good talking-to-"

"Which completely distracted me from my knitting!" interrupted the Doctor, "Rose, have you ever tried Perpetual space knitting? The wool is on a never-ending spool - very useful for making scarves - but it has to be mentally kept in check, otherwise it elongates infinitely, never stopping. When the Master here _completely _ignored this fact and started jabbering on at me about something I _did not actually do on purpose_, I lost control of the wool and it began to lengthen very quickly and dangerously."

"Fortunately," put in the Master, "I had the common sense to borrow that fellow's battleaxe," he nodded at the suit of armour in the corner, "And cut the wool before it extended too much and suffocated us."

"_Un_fortunately," continued the Doctor, "The Master has no experience in chopping wool with battleaxes - to be fair, not the most commonly practised skill - and accidentally smashed a perfectly innocent waterglobe -" he stopped when Rose frowned, and waved a hand around vaguely, "It's a sort of... floating orb. Glass. Bigger on the inside, contains a lot of water - it was an ancient relic of Gallifrey." he paused to glare at the Master, who shrugged indifferently, "-And flooded the place."

"So, uh," began Rose, but was cut off when the Master continued on their combined tirade.

"_Then - _and this is the best part - the Doctor got a bit angry-"

"Well you _did _break one of our only Gallifreyan treasures!" the Doctor interrupted, but the Master spoke over him.

"-And _stupidly_ threw the knitting needles at me. The thing about perpetual space knitting needles, Rosie, is that they're kind of sentient and rather malicious if not controlled. I don't know _why _you like that knitting so much, Doctor. You're simultaneously running risks of suffocation and being stabbed by psychopathic flying needles."

The Doctor shrugged. "I'm a thrill-seeker."

"_Anyway_," said Rose, struggling to keep them both on track, "What 'appened then?"

"They very sneakily decided to lock the door from the inside, _and _break the central heating," explained the Master, pointing at a metal panel on the far wall, in which were impaled several sharp black knitting needles, "But the TARDIS electrocuted them."

"Good old TARDIS," smiled the Doctor.

"_Bad _old TARDIS," the Master corrected, "She didn't fix the heating. Some of us were wearing pyjamas, you realise." he addressed this last comment to Rose, who raised her eyebrows, looking at the Doctor's coat, which was wrapped around the Master like a blanket.

"I managed to pursuade him to wear it," explained the Doctor, "When he was a few minutes short of getting hypothermia."

"Right," said Rose, batting a nearby dandelion head towards them, "And what about these?"

The two Time Lords exchanged confused looks.

"They just sort of..." the Master began, "...Happened," finished the Doctor.

Rose nodded. "And all this... in the space of _one hour_?"

"Pretty much," nodded the Doctor.

"Why didn't'cha call me?"

"For a man who lives in a phone box, I don't usually carry a phone," he replied, then nodded at the Master, "And he's wearing jim jams."

"Would you _stop _using ridiculous Earth phrases?" said the Master resignedly, "First 'Savvy', now this." He turned to Rose again and whispered conspiratorially, "He watches too much Pirates of the Caribbean."

Rose laughed and bounced over to the sofas, offering a hand to each Time Lord and pulling them up, "I can't leave you two alone for an _hour!_" she grunted, "Come on, let's get you warmed up. Fireplace Room Five sound good, yeah?"

"Good idea! I've recently restocked on marshmallows!" said the Doctor, bouncing up and grinning like a madman, "I got them from Felspoon. They taste _delicious_ when toasted!"

"No, they don't." said the Master.

"Yes, they do," retorted the Doctor, folding his arms and glaring at the other Time Lord.

"No, they don't," said the Master again, mirroring the Doctor's pose.

"Yes, they do."

"They do _not_."

"Well you don't have to eat them!"

"Actually, that's right," the Master said, spinning around and making for the door, "I'm going back to bed - that is, if my whole bedroom hasn't disolved yet."

"No, you are _not_," said Rose, intercepting him and grabbing his hand. She felt his fingers. "You're chilly, and by Time Lord standards, that's freezin'. Come on."

She held out her other hand to the Doctor, who grinned and took it.

Rose practically dragged them both to Fireplace Room Five, where they fortunately discovered some other types of marshmallows which the Master seemed happy with. Then the three of them sat on comfortable chairs and toasted marshmallows by the fire until they ran out of marshmallows. Then the Master suggested toasting the Doctor's hair. Then the Doctor threw his last Raxacoricofallapatorian marshmallow at him, which subsequently caused another complicated chain of events that laboriously stretched off into the distance like the perpetual space wool. Rose decided living in a TARDIS with two Time Lords was 45% trouble, 30% fun, 25% mortal peril, and 100% The Best Thing In The Universe. Ever.


End file.
